Thread by @wang_seaver

I feel uncomfortable sometimes about how climate folks sometimes default to talking about people in low + middle-income countries primarily as current/future climate victims. I think this overlooks much context + minimizes their agency. (1)

Pic from Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia in 2010

Bangladesh, for instance, has doubled literacy rates within my lifetime, halved maternal mortality in the last 20 yrs, tripled manufacturing output in the last 10 years, and provided some electricity access to 85% of its population today from 55% in 2010. (2)

In the last 10 years, the economies of Bangladesh, Vietnam, Mongolia, for example have been growing at rates that rival China’s in recent decades, with GDP growth rates (yes, imperfect metric I know) of ~5-10% per year. (3)

Are communities in low and middle-income countries vulnerable to climate change? Yes, absolutely. That said, they are certainly not passively helpless, and with each decade their state capacities and societal resiliency are growing. (4)

By no means am I implying everything will be fine, or that we shouldn’t worry about those most vulnerable to climate impacts. I just want to urge people to recall that people everywhere have agency, that many low and middle-income countries are transforming at a rapid pace (5)

We should treat people + govts of rising economies as the increasingly capable partners they are, and avoid perpetuating static images of countries becoming ever more out of date. We should strive to be updated on new progress while also acknowledging remaining challenges. (6)

I believe that such an evolving mindset, striving to understand the ever-changing present and recognize future ambitions, will ultimately help us formulate far better climate strategies and build more genuine partnerships. (END)